April 12, 2004

Declassification Of The August 6, 2001, Presidential Daily Briefing Day: The mainstream news media, for some reason, hasn
posted by de Carabas 20 years ago
  • Condi Rice is smoking hot. A summary of her testimony follows: Lie, lie, distortion, half-truth, pander, manipulation, pseudo-intellectual bombast. Dodge, dodge, feint, lie, dodge, avoid, subject change, lie, slander, pretentious generalization, character assassination, bald-faced lie. Oversimplification, undersimplification, condescension, insult, insult, lie, avoidance of responsibility, avoidance of question about avoiding responsibility, cheap political point, utter, malicious lie. Grimace, slither, dodge, lie, deliberate misinterpretation of history, nonpartisan character disparagement, narrative designed by public-relations experts to create maximum
  • Please tell me this is a joke. He filled in the blanks himself right? It's sad when I have to literally question the validity of something that at face value would usually seem absurdly made up......it's made up right?
  • Here, join the dots.
  • Maybe I should begin considering that cryogenic thing seriously. I'd love to be around 80, a 100, 200 years from now and finally read in history books all about this, no blocked paragraphs, no gag orders due to 'national security'. Ah, and also to know who shot JFK!
  • /from the Department of Posts and Repostes.
  • ...at a convenience store manned by the FBI... I always thought it was these guys manning the convenience stores.
  • Anyway, Google last night revealed the truth about the memo. No wonder George Bush wasn't paying attention to the terrorists.
  • Evil triumphs when good bloggers do nothing. I like seeing lies debunked in near real time. Bias doesn't trouble me -- we're all biased -- incompetence and a drooling, smug dedication to mediocrity (NY Times et al ) does. Neal Pollack makes a good point about the blog telephone game, but more and more people are doing a bang up job of digging beneath the factesque spin. And unlike the commercial media giants, bloggers -- the good ones -- publish corrections prominently.
  • You might want to avoid pissing Neal Pollack off. Feh. His tender, aching man-nipples are bleeding because nobody is buying his books. So he squalls for attention, hoping beyond hope that somebody will mistake him for Mark Leyner.
  • ...hearkening back to a golden age in American media when all news was rigorously fact-checked and uncolored by partisan bias. I remember that golden age! If I recall correctly, it was between 10:34 and 10:36 a.m., June 3, 1958. I still get all misty thinking about it.
  • I have access to the full briefing, or at least to quotes from the full briefing, which I got off the comment page of a website that was linked to the comment page of another website. A summary follows. What? I mean, I'm all for outrage over things, but, Christ, man, this is like "a friend of a friend of my hairdresser told me". Put up PDFs, or at least, oh, I don't know, link to your shadowy deep-throat insider blog comment page, a source so indistinct it bears no consideration at all. But this is a blog, and the rules of traditional journalism don’t apply to me. Fuck off. They don't apply to you because nobody goes to you for reporting. Real journalism, real newspapers, would have clear boundaries between factual reporting and editorializing and opinion pieces -- something most (most!) bloggers have sincere issues with. I'll lump pollack into this category: at once he wants to be a serious newsbreaking reporter, an editorial correspondent and an opinion writer, but he wants to do all three for all the wrong reasons and winds up corrupting the value of his reporting -- that he has seen parts of the briefing not widely available; this factual evidence -- because he ruins it with his little sign off of "Shame on your vile house. Impeach". If you want to write an op-ed, fine, but cite facts outside your little world, otherwise it looks like you're making shit up, bozo. Traditional journalism is more that squatting over a keyboard and letting your feeble inspiration stream out in filthy, stinking clotted chunks of unsupported invective If anything, blogs are the true newspapers of our time, hearkening back to a golden age in American media when all news was rigorously fact-checked and uncolored by partisan bias. Bullshit. Show me your fact-checking instead of waxing mastubatorially about how empowering your turgid puling is. You got inside information? Show me. Show my liberal, Bush-impeaching ass what you got or go home. You can bang out all the amusing rhetoric you like (Raul is funny : "every time they kill an Iraqi, another punk band is born") but don't call what you do reporting, don't call it non-partisian, and don't call it fact-based. Tender, aching man-nipples indeed.
  • *flings at self*
  • HOLD IT FOLKS. both the washington post and the new york times ran that briefing in its entirety. how much more mainstream do you want????
  • (there's nothing that pisses me off worse than news bloggers getting all huffy about the "mainstream press" supposedly "censoring" news... when they haven't even bothered CHECKING the mainstream press in the first place!!!! arg!!!!)
  • (and let me clarify my statements: the mainstream media has run, in its entirety, portions of the briefing that have been declassified. anything else you're seeing through "a friend of a friend" is simply untrue, it hasn't yet been declassified.)
  • this is, in its entirety, EVERYTHING that has been declassified thus far. i have it in PDF form if anyone cares to email me and would like to see it (dru.sefton@newhouse.com) Declassified and Approved for Release, 10 April 2004 Bin ladin Determined To Strike in US Clandestine, foreIgn government, and media reports indicate Bin Ladin since 1997' has wanted to conduct terrorist attacks in the US. Bin Ladin implied in US television interviews in 1997 and 1998 that his followers would follow the example of World Trade Center bomber Ramzi Youse! and "bring the fighting to America." Af1er us missile strikes on his base in Afghanistan in 1998, Bin Ladin told followers he wanted to retaliate in Washington, according to a -- -- service. An Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ) operative told - - service at the same time that Bin Ladin was planning to exploit the operative's access to the US to mount a terrorist strike, The millennium plotting in Canada in 1999 may have been part of Bin Ladin's first serious attempt to implement a terrorist strike in the US. Convicted plotter Ahmed Ressam has told the FBI that he conceived the idea to attack Los Angeles International Airpor1 himself, but that6in \ , Ladin lieutenant Abu Zubaydah encouraged him and h~tped facilltatetne operation. Ressam also said that in 1998 Abu Zubaydah was p1annfng-'hrs own US attack. Ressam says Bin Ladin was aware of the Los Angeles operation. Although Bin Ladin has not succeeded, his attacks against the US Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998 demonstrate that he prepares operations years in advance and Is not deterred by setbacks. Bin Ladin associates surveilled our Embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam as early as 1993, and some members of the Nairobi cell planning the bombings were arrested and deported in 1997. AI-Qa'ida members-including same wha are US citizens-have resided in ar traveled to the US far years, and the graup apparently maintains a support structure that cauld aid attacks. Two ai-Calida members found guilty in the conspiracy to bomb our Embassies in East Africa were US citizens, and a senior EIJ member lived in California in the mid-1990s. A clandestine source said in 1998 that a Bin Ladin cell in New York was recruiting Muslim-American youth for attacks. We have not been able to corroborate some of the more sensational threat reporting, such as that from a -~._. service in 1998 saying that Bin Ladin wanted to hijack a US aircraft to gain the release of "Blind Shaykh" 'Umar 'Abd aI-Rahman and other US-held extremists. continued' Declassified and Approved for Release, 10 April 2004 For the President Only 6 Auousl 2001 Declassified and Approved for Release, 10 April 2004 - Nevenheless, FBI information since that time indicates patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of aNacks, including recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York. The FBI is conducting approximately 70 luillieid investigations throughout the US that it considers Bin ladin-related. CIA and the FBI are investigating a call to our Embassy in the UAE in May saying that a group or Bin ladir1 supporters was in the US planning at1acks with explosives. Declassified and Approved for Release, 10 April 2004 For the President Only 6 Augusl 2001
  • (and, as american news consumers, you'd actually trust this neal pollack, who lists his stats as "hot and thick" and details body piercings? i hope not!)
  • SideDish: there's nothing that pisses me off worse than news bloggers getting all huffy about the "mainstream press" supposedly "censoring" news... when they haven't even bothered CHECKING the mainstream press in the first place!!!! A neat summarization of my feelings, in only two sentences. I bet we could get a routine going with good blogger/bad blogger, SideDish.
  • Hey, I'm a good political blogger. I do not go around bashing mainstream media. I love guys like Glenn Reynolds who bash "big media" and collects a paycheck from MSNBC for writing a crap blog on their site. And I feel fight anyone to the death if they argue with me that his MSNBC blog is good. No one in this group reads that thing everyday. People, Neal Pollack is satire. Do not use him as a news source. The man writes about his love of teasbagging. His quotes from the briefing are obviously bs. SideDish relax (and feel free to feed me news tips).
  • i keep meaning to do a story on the ever-more blurry lines between news, and satire presented as news, and news presented as satire, and newsy satire presented as satirish news, and how confusing it all is.
  • Major omission of lie to create partial truth. Lie for political convenience. Lie for partisan gain. Lie to protect the economic interests of an incredibly small number of people. Reception of flattery. Dispersal of flattery. Wolof, have you ever seen Schizopolis?
  • Sidedish: If you ever do, try to get some archive tapes of the Canadian satire show This Hour has 22 Minutes. I haven't watched it recently (miss my CBC!), but for years it managed to present news and satire in one beautiful witty swoop. It was actually my main source for political news for years, and was generally accurate, though of course biased.
  • homunculus, I have covered Ahmad Chalabi. The guy is a crook and liar. The Bush administration also wants to make him the next President of Iraq. The problem is that Saddam Hussein is polling higher than Chalabi.
  • Here's an article on Rice's testimony in in front of the 9/11 Commission. The Augest 6 briefing is mentioned. I found this exchange between her and Ben-Veniste interesting.
    BEN-VENISTE: Did you tell the president, at any time prior to August 6th, of the existence of al-Qaeda cells in the United States? RICE: First, let me just make certain. . . BEN-VENISTE: If you could just answer that question, because I only have a very limited . . . RICE: I understand, Commissioner, but it's important . . . BEN-VENISTE: Did you tell the president . . . RICE: . . . that I also address ... (APPLAUSE) It's also important that, Commissioner, that I address the other issues that you have raised. So I will do it quickly, but if you'll just give me a moment. BEN-VENISTE: Well, my only question to you is whether you . . . RICE: I understand, Commissioner, but I will . . . BEN-VENISTE:. . . told the president. RICE: If you'll just give me a moment, I will address fully the questions that you've asked.
    She was hell bent in burning the clock when she testified. Commissioners only had ten minutes each. Also, Bush thought the Augest 6 briefing was so important that he went on a one month vacation on Augest 7, 2001.
  • Why was there a time limit at all?
  • People, Neal Pollack is satire. Do not use him as a news source. The man writes about his love of teasbagging. His quotes from the briefing are obviously bs. I was wondering how long it would take for someone to note that. Pollack isn't praising bloggers over big media, he's mocking bloggers and doing a hilarious job of it. A few months back it was Instapundit and co., and now he's gunning for their lefty counterparts. Of course, they don't notice -- they're too busy hoisting up more snarky posts in their never-ending ideological flamewar. One of my favorite Pollack articles: Nobody gives a shit what anti-war or pro-war writers think. Really. So shut up. That goes double for poets. Shut the hell up, poets. Everybody just shut up.
  • *checks handy list above detailing who's got a sense of humour*
  • Ook Ook! Can I be on the list?! *looks up at first post* ...... stupid lists
  • Nobody gives a shit what anti-war or pro-war writers think. Really. So shut up. That goes double for poets. Shut the hell up, poets. Everybody just shut up. I read that Neal Pollack piece before. I loved what he had to say about Andrew Sullivan.
    Andrew Sullivan, who was once the editor of the New Republic, and later a controversial freelance writer specializing in gays, Catholicism, and gay Catholicism, also lays claim to the Orwell legacy. This is absurd. At least Hitchens has been to North Korea. On the other hand, Sullivan's political writing is perhaps the worst of its kind. It usually appears on his widely read website, andrewsullivan.com, though occasionally he takes the time to write a column for Salon to denounce dangerous characters such as Harry Belafonte and Sheryl Crow.
    Andy actually did write an unintentionally hysterical article on Sheryl Crow for Salon.
    Doesn't it sometimes get a tad bit embarrassing being on the left these days?
    Andy, isn't embarrasing to get ripped in Vanity Fair for your pro-Iraq war views.
    That Sullivan...felt impelled to pick a fight with a lesser-known blogger was a sign of insecurity